Stress, Risk, and Resilience in Children and Adolescents: Processes, Mechanisms, and Interventions

Stress, Risk, and Resilience in Children and Adolescents recognizes the complexity of the developmental processes that impact on coping and resilience and the importance of sociocultural factors. In this respect, the relation between a stressor and an outcome depends on many factors, including the individual’s previous experience, perception of the event, coping skills and social supports. In turn, each of these factors displays meaningful variation by developmental status, social background, and cultural context. The examination of individual differences in vulnerability to stress and risk factors has grown substantially over the past decade as it has become clearer that some children do, in fact, ‘beat the odds.’ In order to understand why some children succumb to even modest stress while others remain resilient in the face of what appear to be overwhelming stressors, research has increasingly examined the processes and mechanisms by which children of different ages deal with adverse life experiences, rather than merely studying the stressors themselves. Many problem behaviors have multiple causes, and most children with one problem behavior also have others. The co-occurrence and/or interrelatedness of risk factors and problem behaviors is, therefore, an important area of research.

• 1985 book on risk and resilience was landmark volume • Visibility of editors, especially Haggerty and Garmezy

Dedication; Preface Robert Haggerty and Lonnie Sherrod; 1. A triad for our times: stress, risk, and resilience Norman Garmezy; 2. Context and process in research on risk and resilience Susan Gore and John Eckenrode; 3. Parental divorce and children’s well being: a focus on resilience Robert Emery and Rex Forehand; 4. Mechanisms and processes of adolescent bereavement David Clark, Robert Pynoos, and Ann Goebel; 5. Risk, resilience, and development: the multiple ecologies of black adolescents in the United States Saundra Murray Nettles and Joseph Pleck; 6. The stress-illness association in children: a perspective from the biobehavioral interface Ronald Barr, W. Thomas Boyce, and Lonnie Zeltzer; 7. Child and adolescent depression: covariation and comorbidity in development Bruce Compas and Constance Hammon; 8. The school-based promotion of social competence: theory, research, practice, and policy Maurice Elias and Roger Weissberg; 9. Intervention research: lessons from research on children with chronic disorders I. Barry Pless and Ruth E. K. Stein; 10. Stress research: accomplishments and tasks ahead Michael Rutter .